inally bringing to an end weeks of guano-infested cave searching by American marines, along with weeks of slightly anxious channel surfing by the American public, Osama bin Laden was captured by U.S. forces on Saturday. After months of successfully dodging U.S. military efforts and covert-ops "snatch and grab" missions, bin Laden was ultimately done in by a faulty rubber band in his midsection, which snapped, causing his torso and legs to separate. Escape was then near impossible for the Saudi militant.

Reports differ as to the reason behind the failure of bin Laden's rubber band. American military personnel claim to have witnessed and awesome battle to the death between bin Laden and anti-terrorist ranger Beachhead, a former Advisor at the Covert Ops School in Central America. According to eyewitness accounts, Beachhead found bin Laden's secret sandbox base, and caught him off guard with the butt of Sci-Fi's laser rifle, which he'd been carrying ever since Sci-Fi's legs got chewed off by a dog. (Ed. note: Sci-Fi is currently carrying Spirit's arrowhead gun, since Spirit never came back from a sleep-over and Joey Dombrowsi's house and nobody really understands how that gun is supposed to work anyway.) After stunning the terrorist mastermind, Beachhead reportedly scissorlocked bin Laden's head and flipped him over onto a rock, the resultant stress snapping bin Laden's rubber band and reducing him to a separate torso, pair of legs attached by a little hook, and a free-floating crotch segment. Some eyewitnesses claim that a Beachhead pile driver was actually the culprit, but these reports are in the minority.

Taliban supporters have taken great issue with the U.S. reports, however, and are unified in their claims that bin Laden's rubber band snappage was the direct result of "the weight of the monstrously awe-inspiring Arab donger that Allah saw fit to bestow on him as a reward for his courage in facing the infidels." Preliminary coroner's reports have made no mention of such a donger, though part of bin Laden's free-floating crotch segment is said to have resembled a moderately-sized donger, according to some witnesses.

Yet another opinion is held by the American Red Cross, who's workers have gone on record saying that this tragedy could have been averted with proper rest, a little oil and far less sandbox duty for bin Laden himself.

Regardless of the cause, U.N. medical personnel are working around the clock to reattach bin Laden's legs, and may have to resort to an elasticy hair thingy or twist-tie if an appropriate replacement band cannot be found in time. A panel of impartial Arab doctors are overseeing the operation as well, to make sure that bin Laden's crotch segment is not mistakenly left out of the reconstruction process.

In a speech carried live by all major networks Sunday afternoon, President Bush called development a major victory in the war against terrorism, and added a personal message for Cobra Commander himself:

"We know you're out there, you lisping freak of nature. The American people will stand for your aggression no longer. You may have brainwashed Stormshadow, but now we have one of yours as well. You can only hide behind that weird bald guy for so long. We're going to kick you in the ass so hard you poop kidneys. You heard me. Give up now and we'll see about digging up some magic spores to turn you back into a dude, or if that fails, we'll get you into the reptile house of a nice zoo. If I have to fly out there and pull that tea cozy off your head myself the deal won't be nearly as sweet, I guarantee you. Sleep tight on your heating rock, jerkballs."

he Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences announced today that they are creating a special category of Oscar, beginning with this year's ceremony, that will be reserved exclusively for actor Kevin Spacey.

"We just really, really like the guy, you know?" said an Academy spokesperson. "That's why we've created the Kevin Spacey Perpetual Award, to be given to Kevin Spacey every single year from now on. We just think he's a great practitioner of his craft, and a delight to have around."

Speaking under condition of anonymity, at a location that may or may not have been the Viper Room, the spokesperson, wearing a Groucho mask and holding a handkerchief in front of his mouth to disguise his voice, went on to add that "This doesn't mean he won't still be eligible for Oscars in other categories, like Best Actor or whatever. It just means that we're assured of having him up on stage and thanking the Academy at least once every year."

"The great thing is, he's not some fat, bloated lunatic with his best years long behind him who walks around the set without his pants on and sends Native American women to pick up his awards and talk politics all night, like Brando. And he's not a young, talented firebrand like Sean Penn, who ignores our annual get-together and calls us all bad names. He's just a real nice guy in real life. Or so I've heard."

Casting a wary glance from side to side to make sure no one was eavesdropping, the spokesperson went to say, in a very low voice, "There is also a significant faction among the Academy members who still think he might actually be Keyser Soze, and I can tell you in confidence that that belief may have played a small part in this decision. Of course," he said, chuckling slightly and leaning back in his chair, "he could also really be the alien Prot, and disappear from this Earth in a beam of light at any time, heh. That's the beautiful thing about Kev is that you just never know, you know what I mean?"

When asked if there were plans to set up a special Perpetual Award for anyone else, the spokesperson replied, "Well, we tossed around Julia Roberts' name for a while, because most of us like her a lot, but the consensus was that we would hold off with her until she decides to get naked onscreen. Because really, how are you supposed to judge if a broad's got talent or not when she keeps her clothes on in every single movie she makes? I mean, what's up with that?"

One night several weeks ago, I got home after a grueling day of communing to find a strange-assed envelope in my mail box, wedged between the usual offer for Sea Monkeys and a Carmen Electra poster catalog. At first I thought I might have won a Harley or maybe my report card from the third grade had finally shown up. No such luck. When I studied the return-address more closely, I realized it was from the Jury Commissioner's Office, and that could only mean one thing.

The game was on.

Ever since the I was in shortpants, watching my dad do battle with unseenfoes over the telephone line, I'd waited for this day. The time had come to do what any honest, red-blooded American would do when they got the call: to match wits with the American justice system and try like hell to get out of jury duty. This is what our fathers have fought and died for time and time again, compadres: the right to outsmart The Man and avoid having to find parking downtown.

I decided to warm up by trying my old stand-by dodge. I called the number listed on the back of the summons and, in a bone-chilling facsimile of my mother's voice, told the jury duty operator that Omar would be unable to make it, because he had the measles or some shit. Looking back now, it was probably throwing that "or some shit" on the end that sunk my subterfuge, because the operator said I'd have to reschedule for another date. I thought fast and tried adding on that I had whiskey-dick as well, but she seemed pretty unimpressed by that improvisation.

I knew then that the old stand-by wasn't going to cut it this time, not by a long-shot. It was like trying to carve a jack-o-lantern with a piece of cooked spaghetti: damn useless. I was pretty surprised, too, because the exact same ploy worked wonders that time when I had to get out of a date with the ugly-assed daughter of one of my uncle's business partners. Shit, by the time I got to the whiskey-dick part I don't even think she wanted to go on the date any more, but these jury duty mugs had far tougher nuts to crack.

Several subsequent calls to the jury duty line proved equally unsuccessful: it turns out that swearing like a motherfucker, being a Communist or having a thick Mexican accent are all honky-dory if you want to be a juror these days. Go figure.

I went to the drawing board and read the pamphlet that came with my summons, figuring I had to beat these hard-asses at their own game. According to the pamphlet, there were only three excuses that would get you out of jury duty: you don't speak word uno of English, you're so damned old you scare little kids, or you've already been on a jury in the last two years. Now I know what you're thinking, and believe me I thought of it first: between that wet pajama contest I judged locally and being in the audience for that taping of Divorce Court last year, I should be good for another four years at least. Not so, claim the Jury Nazis.

Since they had to be such assholes about the whole two-year thing, I decided to play a little hardball and spent the next two weeks answering the phone in a made-up nonsense language that was like some kind of cross between German and the ingredients of a Snapple. Once again, those clever motherfuckers got the drop on your friend Omar by calling at eight in the morning when I was dead asleep and had momentarily forgotten about the whole "No English" ruse. So much for project "Nein Sorbate Verboten."

I briefly considered making some kind of old-man suit out of croissant mix and talcum powder, but after a particularly nasty talcum mishap I got pissed off and just called those uptight pigfuckers and told them that it's my constitutional whoozumwhatzit to have them kiss my pale white ass, with whipped topping if you please, and that in the mean time I hoped they all choked on a turd. It was a bold shift in strategy, I admit, but for a while I thought it might have worked and that I'd scared them off.

Then one day I received a notice in the mail saying that if I didn't show up for jury duty, I'd be held in contempt of court and fined $121. Woah. Now, I don't know how they arrived at that figure, I suspect they were peeking into the old Bricks Checking Account again, but suffice it to say they were now officially speaking my language. These were some stone-cold bastards.

After a rousing rental of "A Few Good Men", I decided that jury duty probably wouldn't be that bad, and that maybe I'd luck out and get some kind of case that involved a dude being smothered by fake boobs or something. Really, any case that involved topless testimony would've been cool by me, I'm flexible.

And to tell you the truth, in the end, I actually had a good time. And man was I glad that I'd thought to wear my judge costume from last Halloween, because they treat those regular jurors like assholes. I got a much better seat and even got to give some dude the chair for eating his neighbor's horse in some kind of funny-assed cultural misunderstanding. The rest of the day probably would have been a blast too if the real judge hadn't shown up and had me re-assigned to some boring damned murder trial. Since when does it take a whole friggin' week to figure out that the dude with the chain-saw did it? I'd planned on two hours tops, with maybe a break for a romantic interlude in the middle. Some fussy sacks of juror-scat might argue that it would have been over sooner if I hadn't been playing the "Do you have a verdict?/Your honor, we have a dickfour" game with the judge, but that only added twenty minutes, tops.

And the memories, as they say, will last a lifetime. I think the taser scars probably will too.

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